David McCann at his RTS teammates in high spirits at the Tour of Taihu Lake.

(Mario Stiehl)

A compact peloton at the Tour of Taihu Lake.

(Mario Stiehl)

Celebration time on the podium at the Tour of Taihu Lake.

(Mario Stiehl)

Already a double stage winner at the inaugural Tour of Taihu Lake stage race last year, Alois Kankovsky (Dukla Praha) showed his pure speed once again to the Chinese crowd of the Jiangsu province. Stage 2 ended up with a bunch gallop in which Ukraine’s Yuriy Metlushenko of Konya Torku Seker Spor and Russia’s Alexander Serebryakov of Team Type 1 took the secondary honours while Kankovsky’s team-mate Milan Kadlec kept the orange leader jersey with no difficulty.

The race was made up of a 15.9km circuit to be covered eight times on Shuangshandao Island. “Our team was strong enough to keep the bunch all together,” Kadlec told Cyclingnews. “Hong Kong had the same intention as us, so it was difficult for the others to believe they could break away. The wind made our tactic a bit easier too.”

Hengxiang’s Wang Meiyin, who recently won the King of the Mountains prize at the Tour of Hainan, and Frenchman Benjamin Giraud (La Pomme-Marseille) tried their luck but their advantage didn’t exceed 1:20. The bunch sprint finish was inevitable. It was disturbed by a crash but that didn’t affect the Czechs who had the race in their hands. “Two of us passed the last curve in the top ten,” Kadlec continued. “When it comes down to a bunch sprint, we ride for Kankovsky. He’s faster than anybody else here.”

“I was confident since I know the race for having won twice here last year,” said former world omnium champion Kankovsky. “It’s not a surprise for me to win but we never know what can happen in a sprint.” “For sure the best sprinter has won today,” said Metlushenko, the runner-up. “My little regret is that I’ve had to open the sprint quite far away from the finish because my teammate Sergey Grechin got caught in the crash. Today’s second place is like a victory for me. It puts my Turkish team at a high level on the map of cycling. I’m happy that they fully appreciate such a result. Recently I’ve won two races on the national calendar in Turkey, I’ve won the national series individually and we’ve won as a team as well.”

The most disappointed sprinter was Serebryakov who won four stages in Hainan but was disqualified from one of them. “The wind and the racing style made me too nervous,” the future Euskaltel-Euskadi rider said. “It was easier to read and control the race in Hainan with teams like Astana and Argos-Shimano. RusVelo led the sprint until Ilesic did it for me. I started sprinting from a bit too far out at 250 metres. Let’s see what I can do in another stage.” More bunch sprints are expected at the Tour of Taihu Lake. “But I’m going to win them all,” Kankovsky warned. “The most important was to win once.” However, Dukla Praha seems in control of the situation.